"The Out Crowd" by Michael Kirby

EXCERPT and GIVEAWAY

The Out Crowd

by Michael Kirby

Author Michael Kirby stops by today to share an excerpt from his satirical novel The Out Crowd. You can also enter our exclusive giveaway for a chance to win a paperback copy of your own.

Description

Hallie Flynn was ready for the perfect senior year, but everything changes at Homecoming when petty rumors spiral out of control. The In Crowd was always who everybody in the Out Crowd dreamed of being. The Out Crowd consisted of everybody else. Isaiah was also expecting a normal senior year. His biggest concern was earning a scholarship for college, but then all the norms evaporated. Gossip piles on top of itself, overwhelming his social life, and everyone else's. Friendships are ruined. People from all walks of Gates High School life no longer know who to trust.

Determined, Hallie makes it her mission to set the record straight. But by the time the gossip desperately needed to be stopped, it was already too late. Gates High could never be the same as it was again, because rumors and gossip are not toys to be played around with. What appears simple and straightforward becomes more confusing. Eventually the rumors take on a life of their own and truth and untruth merge into an unrecognizable blur. Both the In Crowd and the Out Crowd learn to live with their new fate in different ways. Inevitably, lessons are learned, but only after the damage is already done.

Image created using Mockup Shots.

Excerpt

"Shut it down!  Shut it down!  Shut it down!"  Every football player and cheerleader in the school was there, shouting it in unison. Isaiah, Craig and Everett joined a handful of other members of the Out Crowd coming in to catch a peek of what was going on. A few of them actually joined in with the In Crowd.

Principal Terrence's secretaries stood up to greet the mob at first. Soon, however, they were overwhelmed and returned to sitting at their desks, their eyes wide as marbles, exchanging looks with one another. Principal Terrence himself was nowhere to be found.

Isaiah looked around. "Okay, what's going on here?"

"What's going on is that our latest story seems to have rubbed some people the wrong way."  Tyler Base walked up and stood beside Isaiah, appearing quite pleased with himself.

"Is it true?" Everett asked Tyler, sounding somewhat skeptical. "Did they really rig the Class Clown election by giving lollipops to the eighth graders, or is this just another one of your gossip columns?"

"Oh, it's not just gossip this time," said Tyler. "We've got mountains of evidence for it. Listen to how the In Crowd is desperately trying to sweep this one under the rug. This is going to be priceless."

"What do you mean?" Craig asked him.

"Let me put it to you this way. Nobody will be doing them any favors simply to sit with them at lunch anymore. They're finished."

Hallie continued to lead the chants from just in front of the secretaries' desks. "Shut it down!  Shut it down!" she continued to lead as much of the portion of the student body gathered there repeated after their leader. "Resist toxicity!" shouted Hallie.

"Resist toxicity!" the rest of the In Crowd repeated.

"Shut down the Gates Sentinel!" yelled Hallie.

"Shut down the Gates Sentinel!" echoed the rest.

"What's going on guys?"  Karen had just entered the room herself. She turned off her cell phone and put it in her backpack. Everything in front of her now had her full attention.

"Chaos," said Everett.

"Total chaos," Craig concurred.

Finally, Principal Terrence opened the door to his office and emerged into the entranceway. "Alright, I'm coming out," he said, exasperated, as the noise filling up the whole room gradually simmered down. "Hello, all you students who have come to my office with no appointment to yell really loudly. What can I do for you?"

[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]

Praise for the Book

Reviewed by Lesley Jones for Readers' Favorite:

“In The Out Crowd by Michael A. Kirby, at Gates High School, the pupils are separated into two groups; the In Crowd of just 69 pupils and the Out Crowd. Hallie Flynn, senior cheerleading captain, becomes the victim of gossip when information about her relationship becomes public knowledge. As she tries to quell the rumors, her actions make the gossip even worse. Hallie believes she has the answer to make Gates High School less toxic. At first, her plan seems to be working but, as time goes on, the line between what is acceptable behavior and what is simply people's points of view becomes blurred. Hallie's obsession to rid the school of toxicity becomes out of control and soon both the In Crowd and the rest of the school have to decide what is truly important to them.

The Out Crowd by Michael A. Kirby offers a well thought out and creative plot. The storyline moves along consistently, unraveling the powerful message layer by layer. The moral behind the message is both relevant and thought-provoking. I thought the reasoning behind Hallie's actions was admirable at first but slowly her argument becomes diluted as common sense and democracy are lost. The alarm bells were sounded as a reader when Hallie commented about the importance of being anti-toxic rather than factually accurate. This is so realistic in how many media outlets and those in power seem to feel in today's society. The author has created each character with the utmost consideration and the way they interacted with one another was very realistic. I would love to see this novel in a school library, as I feel the subject matter will spark an interesting debate. This book also encourages young people to have their own thoughts and opinions which is essential. The author has clearly done a lot of research into his subject and executed the message perfectly.”

About the Author

Ever since childhood, Michael has had a constant urge to liberate stories from the realm of his imagination and share them with the world. Various tales and characters would nag at him from inside his head until he finally agreed to give them a new life by putting pen-to-paper or finger-to-keyboard. In time, he realized this meant becoming a writer.

In college he wrote articles for the campus newspaper. After graduating he tried out publishing on various blogs over the years. Now he has turned to books, with a focus on novels.

Giveaway

Enter our exclusive giveaway for a chance to win a paperback copy of The Out Crowd by Michael Kirby (US/Canada only).

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"You’ve Been Volunteered" by Laurie Gelman

EXCERPT and GIVEAWAY

You’ve Been Volunteered
(Class Mom Book 2)

by Laurie Gelman

You’ve Been Volunteered is the second book in the Class Mom series by Laurie Gelman. Also available: Class Mom.

You’ve Been Volunteered is currently on tour with Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours. The tour stops here today for an excerpt and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.

Description

In the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Laurie Gelman’s “irreverent and hilarious” (The New York Post) hit Class Mom, brash, lovable Jen Dixon is back with a new class and her work cut out for her

If you’ve ever been a room parent or school volunteer, Jen Dixon is your hero. She says what every class mom is really thinking, whether in her notoriously frank emails or standup-worthy interactions with the micromanaging PTA President and the gamut of difficult parents. Luckily, she has the charm and wit to get away with it - most of the time. Jen is sassier than ever but dealing with a whole new set of challenges, in the world of parental politics and at home.

She’s been roped into room-parenting yet again, for her son Max’s third grade class, but as her husband buries himself in work, her older daughters navigate adulthood, and Jen’s own aging parents start to need some parenting themselves, Jen gets pulled in more directions than any one mom, or superhero, can handle.

Refreshingly down-to-earth and brimming with warmth, Dixon’s next chapter will keep you turning the pages to find out what’s really going on under the veneer of polite parent interactions, and have you laughing along with her the whole way.

Excerpt

I stare at my computer screen and ponder my email. Is it too short? Too kind? Too sincere? Normally I wouldn’t give a royal rip, but we have a new PTA president starting this year. I haven’t met her yet, but she sent out a note saying she wants to be copied on all class parent emails. This fact alone has me at DEFCON 3. Smells like a micro-manager to me. Nina would never have wasted her time on that crap.

Sadly, Nina is no longer PTA president, nor is she living in Kansas City. My best friend in the world now calls Tennessee home. She moved to Memphis with my former trainer, Garth, and her daughter, Chyna, in June, shortly after it was named the fattest city in the U.S. for like the hundredth time. The mayor decided to start a “Cut the Fat” citywide health initiative and Garth was recruited through one of his Wounded Warrior buddies to develop a middle school program. It was an easy move for Nina—she can run her web design business from anywhere, and Chyna was more than happy to start high school in a new city after her less than stellar middle school years, poor baby.

But all their change and excitement has left me without my best friend, my kick-ass trainer, and a great babysitter … and everyone knows how hard it is to find a great babysitter. Returning as class mom would be so much easier if Nina was still living here—especially since she was the one who, once again, convinced me to jump back into the thankless cesspool.

“Just do it. You know you miss it,” she said on our latest phone call.

“What I miss is you, you big jerk.”

And I really do. There is a little hole in my heart and an emptiness in my life that no number of texts or phone calls is able to fill. Truth be told, that’s why I agreed to rejoin the class mom-palooza. I need something to distract me.

Thank God she didn’t move away last year. I wouldn’t have gotten through it without her. Our family was thrown for a loop when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a rough go for quite a few months and Nina was pretty much the anchor of our care circle. No matter how bad it got, Nina never wavered.

Laura, my sweet second-born, was finishing her last year at KU, but she came home every weekend to cook and clean for my parents. Right before our eyes she went from lazy college kid to domestic goddess. I’m not sure where she learned to make a bed with hospital corners, but I’m thrilled she did.

My oldest daughter, Vivs, moved back to Kansas City from Brooklyn, where she was cohabitating with her architect boyfriend, Raj, and took a job as a nutrition consultant at our local Jenny Craig just to be close to all of us. I nicknamed her the Lone Arranger because she single-handedly scheduled all of my mother’s chemo and doctor visits along with a schedule of who would be taking her to said visits. Finally, her bossy firstborn personality was used for good instead of evil.

Max was eerily quiet but very cooperative no matter how many nights he spent with Chyna babysitting him. And my husband, Ron, was—well, he was a man and frustrated because he couldn’t just fix the problem.

As for me, I was not ready to lose my mother, no way, no how. But instead of standing strong and defiant, I was a very disappointing tower of Jell-O. Who knew I’d fold like origami when the going got tough? There were lots of tears (on my part) and prayers (on my parents’ part), and it was all very bleak and sad until one day my mother, Kay Howard, up and decided that cancer had picked the wrong bitch to mess with. She actually said that, out loud. It was the first time I had ever heard her swear and I learned very quickly it wasn’t going to be the last.

With my mom in fight mode, cancer became our punching bag, literally and figuratively. I hung a boxing bag in my basement workout area, aka Ron’s Gym and Tan, slapped a picture of a cancerous boob on it, and beat the shit out of the picture every day. It was Garth’s idea and it really worked. Not only did my arms get toned, I got out all my frustration, so I was ready to face my mother and her never-ending demands. Not demands for herself, mind you, but for my father. Kay was taking no prisoners, but Ray was struggling with the thought of a life without his darling girl, as he calls her. I always knew my parents loved each other, but I’d never realized how in love they still are. Mom was ready every day with a list of things my dad absolutely needed. It usually looked something like this:

The newspaper

A poppyseed bagel from Einstein’s

Snapple Peach Tea

That toothpaste that tastes like cherry

At least ten hugs

Praise for the Book

“Gelman gets right to the point reuniting readers with the main character they fell in love with in her debut, Class Mom … Her antics are laugh-out-loud funny, and she shows no signs of slowing down. The tone and pacing are excellent, and new characters, who come with their own issues and snark, are delightful.” ~ Library Journal

“Wisecracking Jen Dixon is back in Gelman’s enjoyable follow-up to Class Mom. This refreshing take on modern suburbia will appeal to fans of Lauren Weisberger.” ~ Publishers Weekly

“Dixon's emails to and escapades among the concerned parents of Kansas City have the same anodyne quality as an old-fashioned television sitcom, with a pratfall, a wisecrack, and a chuckle every few minutes like clockwork … Just add chardonnay.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

“All mothers will find themselves relating to Jen’s struggles as a mother and wife in You’ve Been Volunteered.” ~ WorkingMother.com

“I just wish Jen was real so I could hang out with her. Hilarious and the exact escape I needed at night after putting my kid down. Funny, heartwarming, and fulfilling. Brava!” ~ Katie Lowes, actress

About the Author

Laurie Gelman was born and raised in the Great White North. She spent twenty-five years as a broadcaster in both Canada and the United States before trying her hand at writing novels. The author of Class Mom, Laurie has appeared on Live With Ryan and Kelly, Watch What Happens Live, and The Talk, among others. She lives in New York City with her husband, Michael Gelman, and two teenage daughters.

Giveaway

Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win a print copy of You’ve Been Volunteered by Laurie Gelman (US only).

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"Free Pizza" by G. C. McRae

GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY

Free Pizza

by G. C. McRae

Free Pizza by G. C. McRae is currently on tour with iRead Book Tours. The tour stops here today for a guest post by the author, an excerpt, and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.

Description

Brian McSpadden is always hungry. Does he have a disease? Worms? Does it have something to do with his being adopted? He spends his days at his crazy friend Danny’s house, hoping for snacks, but nothing seems to fill the void.

Then Brian receives a mysterious birthday card that says Free Pizza. He soon discovers the card has nothing to do with food and everything to do with the big questions in his life: where did I come from, why did my mother give me up and is there anyone out there who will like me the way I am?

Excerpt

As soon as he was in the door, the boys came tearing out of their room and went for the hugs and their daddy time. That meant that as soon as he sat down in the kitchen, they climbed up onto his lap and hijacked his first half an hour at home. Today they got to him down in the landing, before he had his shoes off.

“We went to the doctor!” Kyle announced.

I was way too antsy to sit there. So I got up and went around into the kitchen and slouched in Mom’s chair to listen.

“I know,” Dad said. “Are you all right?”

Mom was at the kitchen counter. “Oooh, I’ve had a day of it. It was a complete waste of time. We already knew it isn’t allergies.”

“No? What is it, then?”

“He doesn’t know. He’s sending Kyle for more tests. To a nose specialist. They got us in next Monday. At least we don’t have to wait too long.”

“So what’s wrong with him?” Dad came up into the kitchen. He pushed through the boys and went straight to the fridge for his after-work beer. Whenever he took his hat off after work, he always had a piece of his white hair sticking out in some weird direction. He never noticed and he never cared. Today, it was a bunch of jagged spikes veering off to the left.

“They have to do a scope thing up in his sinuses or whatever. Polyps. He might have polyps. That’s what’s making his nose run.”

It was Kyle’s turn to interject. “I got plops, Daddy!”

Dad laughed.

“Paul-ips,” Mom corrected him. “Like Saint Paul?”

There was silence in the kitchen, as if no one knew what she was talking about.

Dad cracked his beer and sat down opposite me. The boys piled onto his lap. Out of habit, Dad tried to keep Kyle’s nose away from the white shirt of his security guard uniform. “So what do they do about ’em?”

“Well,” Mom huffed, furious, “he wasn’t going to do anything! Ten months of this nonsense. With the drugstore full of things we could use? Then he says, oh no, not till after we see the specialist. I got so angry! I told him I wasn’t leaving without a prescription.”

“Okay…”

“Then we stood in line forever. It’s a spray.”

“It goes up here!”

“Kyle, get your finger out of there.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No. Yes! But it tickled.”

“Did you ask about Jayden’s tummy pains?”

Jayden had been having stomach troubles on and off for the last couple of weeks.

“Oh, he poked him in the side and looked down his throat. Then he says, ‘It’s probably gas or growing pains.’ I swear we need a new doctor. All morning, for what?”

“That’s too bad.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Mom said.

“Oh?”

“I asked Dr. Tan how Kyle could have gotten these polyps things—if that’s what he has. You know what he said?”

“No.”

“He asked if there was dust or cobwebs or dirty carpets in our house. I was so insulted. Of course not, I told him. I clean every day. Their clothes are spotless. And my house is immaculate. And you know what he says?”

“What?”

“He says, ‘Well, perhaps your house is too clean.’ Can you imagine? I just about packed up the kids and walked right out of there.”

Jayden decided to steer the conversation back to hilarity. “And Kyle’s got pull-ups in his nose!”

“That’s nice,” Dad said. Then to Mom: “I imagine you were upset.”

“Oh, like I said, that’s not the half of my day. You have to hear about Brian.”

That got me out of my slouch in a hurry.

[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]

Praise for the Book

“This story covers a myriad of situations that a child or teenager might experience and would give them a character to relate to if they read this book. It might spur some conversations between parents and their children.” ~ StoreyBook Reviews

“Free Pizza is a humorous - yet real - look at the family and life of a 12-year-old. The author really did a great job telling this story from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old boy. […] McRae keeps readers interested from start to finish. I settled into the story immediately. I loved the author's writing style and the pace of his story. […] I think this is an excellent read for older elementary aged students or middle school readers.” ~ Angela

“Free Pizza is a charming, wholesome and amusing story about a very typical 12 year old boy. I immediately felt as if Brian could be any 12 year old boy that I had known, always hungry, trying to do his best, but somehow keeps getting in trouble. […] Between Brian's family, his birth mother's family and Danny's family, the fact that there is no normal is really highlighted. Each of these families are unique and a little crazy in their own way, but all of them share love and acceptance.” ~ Stephanie

“I thought it was a pretty good read that will keep the reader laughing out loud and, also, learn some very valuable life lessons. I recommend it. I would love to read more like this one by G. C. McRae in the future. I look forward to reading more by him.” ~ Amy C

“This story is well-written, with humor, action adventure and mystery included within its pages.” ~ LAWonder10

My Review

By Lynda Dickson

“My story is completely weird. It’s all about potatoes and snot and people falling out of trees. It’s about stamps and boobs and it even has a farmer from Alpha Centauri. […] My story has almost nothing to do with pizza, tragically. It’s mostly about me getting to meet my birth mom …” So begins the story of Brian McSpadden, whose birth mother makes contact with him on his twelfth birthday. His aunt gives him a strangely prophetic card saying Free Pizza, but it’s not what he was expecting. Neither is anything else, for that matter, as he spends the holidays pursuing crazy adventures with his friend Danny.

Our narrator has a great voice, full of irreverent humor and astute observations. He keeps the reader engrossed by foreshadowing events to come. The book is full of quirky characters. Unfortunately, I didn’t like any of them. Danny no redeeming qualities. Actually, neither does anyone else. The parents are all hopeless, the kids annoying and uncaring, and Danny’s mother is especially obnoxious. That I kept reading is a testament to the author’s writing. The book is a bit long for the target middle grade audience, with each scene being overly lengthy. Then, when the main story finally wraps up, we get nearly another year’s worth of story in just two chapters. There is just too much going on, in general. The author covers a range of heavy themes, including adoption, teen pregnancy, disability, stalking, bullying, home-schooling, hoarding, mental illness, embezzlement, robbery, breaking and entering, lying, assault, pedophilia, arson, foster care, and bad parenting. These are dealt with in a light-hearted manner and may serve as a starting point for conversations on these topics with your children. I understand the author has gone through numerous revisions of this book, which is semi-autobiographical. He might have been better off writing a number of shorter chapter books, each focusing on one topic.

Warnings: bad behavior by kids and adults alike.

Some of My Favorite Lines

“I’m a stranger who got made by strangers and the only instruction book that came with me was in a foreign language.”

“I tried getting a crowbar of words back into the conversation, to pry it open so I could defend myself, but she wouldn’t budge.”

“I wasn’t sure how I could hate myself any more than I already did, but hey, I had the whole night to try.”

“She ain’t got a maternal bone in her body. She likes her books. That’s her thing.”

Guest Post by the Author

Autobiography versus Fiction

I didn’t realize how much my own writing was at root autobiography until I started visiting schools and kids started asking me pointed questions. “Is there a real place like that?” a small girl asked after I’d read her class a fairy tale. It took me a second to fish for the answer. “Yes,” I admitted. “It’s in my back yard.”

On my way home, I went over the landscape of my most recent novel. The house where I grew up, check. My great aunt’s farm, check. A story told to me by a rough-looking farmer I met at the county dump, check. After a while, I started wondering, had I actually written anything original? Something that wasn’t rooted in my own time and place, my relatives, friends, acquaintances, and all the stories they’d told me over the years?

As a young writer, I tried to hide my origins, pretend I was born into the world of wood-paneled private libraries where geniuses in smoking jackets stood around exchanging witticisms over their cigars and single malt whiskeys. My first short stories, inspired by events in my own life, felt like slumming. It wasn’t until I had kids of my own that realized, no, this was my world, my only world. And the longer I lived in it, the more I saw the stories that were unique to it, the things that no one else would know how to write.

When I came to write the first drafts of Free Pizza, back when I was 25, I tried to stay close to my origins for the simple reason that I already had more than enough to contend with. Learning to write novels involves so many unfamiliar tasks, choosing to write about a world I knew was analogous to clinging to the side the pool, knowing there was ten feet of drownable water below me. It took 35 years and writing many other successful books, to finally let go of the side. By then, I had enough writing skill that I could pick and choose events and characters by pure invention, from research, or from my own life - according to the needs of the story. And that’s the place every writer wants to be: at the helm of their story, in control, and not blown around by laziness, lack of skill, or that devil that never seems to give a writer any peace: nostalgia.

About the Author

G. C. McRae is the bestselling author of two young adult novels, three illustrated children's books and a collection of original fairy tales. His writing is fall-down funny, even when the theme is darker than a coal-miner’s cough. McRae reads to anybody at any time, in person or online, for free, which probably explains why he meets so many people and sells so many books.

In his latest work, Free Pizza, McRae spins the highly emotional themes from his decidedly unfunny childhood into a brilliantly comic yarn. After being given up for adoption by his teenage mom back when single girls were forced to hide unplanned pregnancies, his adoptive parents didn’t exactly keep him under the stairs but, well, let's just say, there were spiders.

A lot has changed since then. McRae’s own children have now grown, and he runs a small farm with his wife, who is herself an award-winning writer.

Giveaway

Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win one of three $20 Amazon gift card and a print copy of Free Pizza by G. C. McRae OR one of two print copies OR one of ten ebook copies (US/Canada only).

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